Closing the shift: four numbers that catch problems in week one

The shift close is the most valuable five minutes in a shop's day, and in most shops it is either skipped or performed as a ritual nobody reads.

The sequence

1. Open with a counted float. A fixed amount, counted and recorded at the start. Without a known opening figure, nothing that follows means anything.

2. Record cash movements during the shift. Drops to the safe, petty cash paid out, change brought in. Each recorded when it happens, not remembered afterwards.

3. Count at the end, blind. The person counting should not see what the system expects. If they do, they will count towards it — not dishonesty, just how attention works.

4. Enter the count and read the variance.

5. Investigate anything above your threshold, tonight, while people are still present.

The four numbers

Expected cash = opening float + cash sales − cash refunds − drops − payouts.

Counted cash = what is physically in the drawer.

Variance = the difference. Small variances are normal. What matters is the pattern: consistently short is a problem; randomly out by a few riyals is human.

Discounts and voids by staff member. This is the number most shops do not look at and should. See below.

Setting a variance threshold

Investigate anything above roughly SAR 20, or 0.5% of cash sales, whichever is larger. Below that, record it and move on — a policy that treats a two-riyal difference as an incident teaches staff to hide differences rather than report them.

What matters more than any single night is thetrend. A cashier who is 15 riyals short on four consecutive Thursdays is a pattern; one who is 40 short once is probably a mis-count of change.

Card settlement

Cash is only half of it. The card total in the shift report should match what the payment provider says it settled, allowing for settlement timing.

Check this weekly, not daily. What you are looking for: transactions in the POS that never settled, or settlements with no matching transaction. Both happen, and both are money.

If your payment provider is integrated with your POS, this is a report. If it is a separate terminal, it is a manual comparison — which is one of the practical arguments for integrated payments. Seepayment reconciliation.

Discounts and voids: the review that finds things

Every evening, look at:

• Discounts by staff member and value
• Voids by staff member and time
• Refunds and credit notes by staff member

You are not looking for a single transaction; you are looking for a shape. Voids concentrated in the last twenty minutes of one person's shift, week after week, is a shape. Discounts that are always exactly the maximum a cashier is allowed is a shape.

None of this proves anything alone, which is why it is a review rather than an accusation. Seepreventing till theft.

Multiple tills

Each till closes separately, with its own float and its own variance. A combined close across four tills makes it impossible to attribute a difference, which is most of the point.

What the report must contain

• Opening float, closing count, variance
• Sales by payment method
• Cash movements: drops, payouts, change in
• Discounts, voids, refunds — with staff names
• Transaction count and average value
• The staff member who opened and the one who closed

One page. If the shift report takes more than two minutes to read, it will not be read after the first week.

The habit that makes it work

A manager signs the shift close. Not a formality — a specific person is accountable for having looked. Shops that do this find problems in week one; shops that do not find them in a quarterly audit, when the cause is three months old and the money is gone.

Wameed's shift close produces the four numbers on one screen with per-cashier attribution; see thefeatures page.